Report From Ladder Company 40 Day 105

Hi team.

Today was a very laid back kind of day. We hung out at the house/station today, hoping for a call that never came in. Good for the residents of this fire district, not so exciting for me. Though I could never claim not to have had a blast!

I gave my sister-in-law, Wendi, a set of the firefighter cookie cutters like the ones I bought myself. The 6 year old, Mark, wanted to make cookies, of course.

My sister-in-law’s mom is staying here too and she took the boys to see the Princess and the Frog movie. We kept little Belles here with us and I rocked her to sleep while chatting with my bro, reminiscing. Wendi took a much needed nap in a rare quiet moment in the house. She was sleeping my bro started to make the cookies with Mark and Joe, the three year old wanted to help too. I took a couple pictures of the boys making cookies! They were doing okay until it came time to roll the dough and cut the cookies out. My bro, having little to no experience decided to sweet talk Aunt Hotflash to help.

None of the plans we tried to make for the day worked out. My bro was trying to make arrangements for us to see our grandfather during my visit. He recently suffered a stroke and is still in a rehab facility. He will probably be moving into an assisted living facility soon along with grandma. Grandma is 95 I think and Grandpa isn’t far behind. Amazing since Grandpa was a fireman OLD SCHOOL style. Way back when eating smoke was standard and getting into SCBA gear was considered a waste of valuable time. Amazing he hasn’t been taken out by cancer! I for one am glad. If all goes well we will try to see him on the second of Jan.

My sister Nancy and her adult daughter Mandy want us to come see them. I am looking forward to seeing them but we are trying to coordinate seeing them with seeing grandpa since they don’t have transportation and would love to see grandpa too. At the same time, we are trying not to schedule too much of our time away from the station because if we do it will guarantee an amazing and important call will come in for Squad 6, and we won’t be here! If we hang out, it will remain quiet as far as calls go. SIGH

I guess I should get to the actual report part of this “report.” Pete logged just under 3,000 steps today for me. I realized at 3:40 that I had only had 16 oz of buttermilk to drink for the day and so I made a conscious effort to fix that. I can honestly say that I have had 2 quarts of tea and 12 oz of apple juice since then, so I am at about 2 ½ quarts of fluid in addition to the buttermilk. I also got enough sleep last night even though I stayed up until the roosters crowed. (not really, but almost!) I slept in until I felt like getting up.

We finished the night by watching Bones, Season 1 on DVD as we waited to ring in the new year. Oh, but that was after I let my brother talk me into trying to play Lego Star Wars on the game cube. That was FUN! I haven’t played video games with my brother since I was 13. That was on the old Atari system. If you’ve ever played the games from NAMCO Museum, DIG DUG, Pole Position, Galaga, PacMan, etc. those are the games we played back then, when they were new! I even had one that was a firefighting game! LAME-O graphics and not really an exciting game to play, but I did because I was just as nuts about all things firefighting back then as I am now! LOL

Well, it is time to wrap things up and get some sleep so we can start all over. I’m still hoping for some action with Squad 6. Hopefully something minor and not to traumatic for the people we go to help. But hopefully more than a ride with flashing lights!



Until next time, stay safe!



Hotflash out.